


Run, Black Rabbit

by KhamanV



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Watership Down - Richard Adams
Genre: Gen, Tribute, Vignette, memorial, shield codex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 17:09:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9081793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KhamanV/pseuds/KhamanV
Summary: A flash fic in honor of one of my favorite authors, Richard Adams, itself a quiet tribute from a trickster to a storyteller.





	

Loki almost never bothered paying attention to the news, particularly when it was exiled to the little ticker feed along the bottom of the screen. That’s where the worst of the negligible information was, in his experience. Rock star overdoses and entertainment notices. If it had any relevance, it would be in a security briefing later. He took notice of the agents muttering in the rec room, however. Men and women transfixed by the larger news, a ragged hole in the fabric of their pop culture experience bringing these threaded spirits together. He watched as Coulson paused in the doorway, then left again, crestfallen and silent. For a moment, the older human looked like a lost child.

These most distanced mortal losses rarely mattered to him, but Loki had courtesy enough to not make the grief of the humans he kept company with any worse than it was. He kept his silence, took up his tea with a mind towards carrying it off to his rooms for privacy, and glanced one more time at the multiple pictures of this Ms. Fisher filling the television. Then his eye caught a name at the bottom, one more loss in the sea of daily human losses. A simple name - _Richard Adams_ \- forgettable against the rest of what his companions grieved of late, and he paused with a frown, not quite grasping why it struck him. He set the tea back down, looking into the ripples of the liquid, trying to grip the thought as it squirmed away like oil.

The full, frightened eye of a rabbit suddenly filled his mind, brown and painted with lively light on the slipcover of an aged hardback. _Oh_ , he thought, and he picked the tea back up, not looking at it any longer. He left the rec room cloaked in his own silence.

Back in his rooms, he rustled along the overfull shelves of books until he found the one he wanted. He thought this particular copy had been lost on the old Globemaster with its destruction, but someone had packed away a number of things during routine cleaning prior and Daisy had come across it while scrounging for something else. She passed it to him some time ago, without making too much a thing out of it. Well before that, he’d had to finish the story with a different copy than the one he’d started with, but then he reread the silly fable of rabbits in its entirety that night anyway. _Fitting_ , he thought with a frown. _We come full circle_.

He flipped the book open, and once again it turned to the well-worn passage that had once disturbed him enough to cause him to toss the book away into a corner. He sat on the couch as he took the words in again.

_All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you…_

A twinge of sorrow struck Loki, mild enough but yet hollow and cool deep inside his chest. His childhood had been filled the brim with stories, and even now he privately read such fantasies whenever the mood struck, but never once had he met a storyteller. Oh, bards, to be sure, and troubadours currying favor with the All-Father, and mummers acting out the words of others, but not a tale-teller like this. Asgard did not love these sorts of tales overmuch in favor of aggrandized legends of song, and so storytellers brought their made-up books out quietly and often without their real names attached. It had been a source of honest surprise to see how storytellers could be openly revered by humans, and he took in the occasional media frenzy over JK Rowling’s public appearances with bemusement. He would not meet this one, now. It didn’t matter, he thought, and yet it did. A little.

Loki closed the book, looking into the eye of the rabbit. The cover had been scratched, changing the gleam of light so that it seemed to be looking back at him. He touched the small, round face, and remembered how he had tried to dismiss the tale as a useless lark back then. A way of killing time while being held and mistrusted, nothing more. This ridiculous novel of small and fragile beasts, with their fleeting lives and secret mythos. Not one of them would live long enough to be remembered, whose individual struggle to survive was meaningless against the greater world.

But here was the tale in his hands, and he remembered it well indeed.

Loki sighed. The rabbits might be fleeting, but their story would endure forever. He sat there for what he thought was only a moment longer, thinking about the story, thinking about what he had learned about loss and change and survival since the first day he’d cracked the cover of this particular tale, then rose to put the book away again.

When he picked up his mug of tea, it had gone cold. He looked at it for a while, and then he pushed it away and pulled the book right back out. With a rustle of paper, he sat down and returned to page one.

…

 _“We go by the will of the Black Rabbit. When he calls you, you have to go.”_ ~ Richard Adams, _Watership Down._

**Author's Note:**

> Watership Down has a tangled place in the Codex ficverse, seeing me playing with the parallels between the lighter-natured El-ahrairah and Loki within the first chapters of A Clear and Present Loki and referencing it both obviously and obliquely several times after. With both of them part of the trickster archetype that has lasted since the earliest days of story and myth, I felt it was likely that of all our own quick and fleeting lives, Loki might notice this one's passing, if just a little.
> 
> Also, it made me feel a bit better to write it down.
> 
> Thank you, Mr. Adams. You'll be missed, even as the stories live on.
> 
> For Richard Adams, 1920-2016.


End file.
